There are two kinds of persecution that we can experience
for our Catholic Faith.There’s what I
would call “hard persecution,” and there’s what I would call “soft
persecution”.

“Hard persecution” is the kind that St. Stephen experienced
in today’s first reading from Acts, chapter 7, courtesy of the people who
stoned him to death, and their accomplice, a young man named Saul of Tarsus
(who later had a conversion and who eventually became St. Paul).This is the kind of persecution that ISIS is
into; it’s the kind of persecution that Christians of almost every denomination
are experiencing in the world right now, especially in Muslim countries.

Persecuted Christians in the world today, for example, should
not expect to receive any sympathy cards from the folks at ISIS or Al-Qaeda or
Boko Haram.

The other kind of persecution that I mentioned is quite different.I call it “soft” because it’s not as open and
not as physically violent as hard persecution is.

But it’s every bit as real—and every bit as dangerous and
destructive.

This is the kind of persecution that the Obama
Administration is engaged in right now in taking the Little Sisters of the Poor
to the Supreme Court to try to force them to pay for contraception and for abortions
in the healthcare plans they offer their employees.

“Ah yes, Mr. President, those Little Sisters of the Poor—those
kind, gentle, loving women who take care of the sick, and the downtrodden and
the elderly—they’re the real problem, they’re the real enemies of freedom,
they’re the ones who are trying to undermine our American way of life!You go get ‘em, Mr. President.You show ‘em who’s boss!”

I think it’s disgraceful.

And then we have the florists and bakers who have been put
out of business and publicly vilified because they’ve respectfully declined,
for religious reasons, to provide flowers or to bake a cake for a “gay
wedding”.Of course, no one would object
if they refused, for the same reasons, to provide those services at a Ku Klux
Klan event.

And how about the situations that Christian doctors and
nurses and pharmacists are finding themselves in more and more frequently these
days, as they get pressured by government authorities to violate their
consciences in their work?

This stuff is going on all around us, my brothers and
sisters, and it seems to be getting worse by the minute.That’s why we pray so often at Sunday Mass in
the prayer of the faithful for religious freedom and the preservation of
conscience rights in our nation.Those
two realities—freedom of religion and the rights of conscience—are being intentionally
undermined in our country right now by persecutors who cleverly disguise their
hatred for Christians as “patriotism,” or as a desire for “fairness” and
“justice” and “equality.”

It’s soft persecution, but it’s persecution nonetheless.

Pope Francis has another way to describe it.He calls it “polite”.In a homily he gave
a couple of weeks ago at a Mass in Rome, he addressed the topic of persecution
head-on, because it’s become such a prevalent problem.It’s not only an issue for us here in the
United States.The Holy Father said that
this second, “softer” kind of persecution is “disguised as culture, disguised
as modernity, disguised as progress: it is a kind of—I would say somewhat
ironically—polite persecution.”The pope
goes on to say that the attitude of those who engage in this kind of
persecution is “if you don’t do this [in other words, if you don’t agree with
us and act accordingly] you will be punished: you’ll lose your job and many
things or you’ll be set aside.”

Pope Francis, I would say, is absolutely correct in his
assessment of the situation.

We, as Catholics, need to be aware of all this—especially
during this election year.And we need
to take action!We need to vote people
into office this November who will honor our Constitution by respecting—and
preserving—the freedom of each and every American to practice his or her
religion according to the dictates of his or her conscience.

One footnote here: In the process of doing this, please do
not be fooled by those candidates who say that they support freedom of worship.That’s not enough!Freedom of religion is what our Constitution
guarantees; consequently, THAT’S what we need to demand from our government.Freedom of religion, you see, is much more
than freedom of worship.Freedom of
religion means that you can live your private life—and your publiclife—
according to the dictates of your faith.Freedom of worship means, “You Christians can pray however you like
within the four walls of your church building, but outside in the real world
you had better think and act and live like the rest of us—or else!”

Or else what’s happening to the Little Sisters of the Poor,
and to Christian florists and bakers and doctors all over this country will
happen to YOU!

Let me close now with a word to the mothers on this
Mother’s Day.Normally my entire homily
on this weekend is devoted to moms, but I really felt called this week to
address the issue of religious freedom, in light of the story we heard in our
first reading—this account of the stoning of St. Stephen.

And yet, there is still a definite message here for mothers
(fathers too!): For the sake of your children, make religious freedom a central
issue in your life, and not just in this upcoming election.Make it a central issue ALWAYS, because, if
we lose religious freedom in this country in the near future, many of our other
freedoms will eventually be lost as well—and your children, and your children’s
children will be forced to deal with the consequences.

We can still save
our nation—and our future.That’s the
good news.But it won’t happen
magically.We have to take action NOW and
make our leaders accountable NOW for what they do—and for what they don’t do—to
protect and promote genuine religious freedom.Because if we don’t stand up in the present moment and fight against the
soft persecution we’re currently experiencing, then hard persecution is very,
very likely to follow.